Shocked at my spending

overspender22

So I’ve been a lurker on here and always trying to find a way to budget as I never seem to have anything left and struggle at the end of each month. 

I plucked up the courage to finally go over my bank apps for January to July this year and I am so shocked. 

I’ve wasted £534 on takeaways, £380 on McDonald’s drinks (frappes/ cokes) and a whopping £1600 on going to bingo. 

I seriously couldn’t believe the numbers and I have spent all weekend trying to find a simple but effective budgeting method and I just can’t work it out. 

I have tried having everything coming out of one bank account (everyday spending, direct debits etc) and it becomes hard to track. 

I’ve tried splitting my money into pots like travel / food but again it’s hard to know what I need in them. 

Any advice on easy ways to budget / organise your bank accounts? I have several bank accounts. 

Eyeful

Give up the bingo. Cut down on the takeaways cokes.

Ballard

Some banks allocate a category to your spending which gives you an easy way to see where your money has gone. Starling & Chase certainly do and I suspect that all of the new internet-based ones do.

Its not a feature that I use but if you’re happy to move banks for this feature it does look like it’s something that you’d find useful.

Depending on your circumstances and the time period you haven’t necessarily wasted that money if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve bought. I’m all for being careful with my money but if bingo was my thing I wouldn’t berate myself too much for spending money on it. 

blue.peter

Sorry, but it seems to me that the problem here isn't so much budgeting as a lack of discipline.

Getting a budgeting system is fine, but you need to stick to it if it's to be any use to you. I'm not suggesting that you give anything up altogether, but that you actually think about any spending *before* you do it. Set yourself a monthly limit for everything, and find the discipline to stick to it. Try thinking along these lines: "if I have this takeaway today, it means that I'm limited to doing it only once more in the next X weeks. Do I want it now, or should I put it off until later?" or "no, I can't have another takeaway because I had two a fortnight ago" or "no, I'll drink [something else] when I get [to the office/home/wherever] instead of an expensive drink at McDonald's".

You might keep a notebook with you, with a page each month for each budget item and record all spending against that budget, with a running total, and look at it before you order your takeaway or enter the bingo hall or whatever. Or maybe do it on a spreadsheet on your phone, or something else.

My point is that setting a budget is only half the story. You need to then find a way of keeping to it.

eskbanker

overspender22 said:

I have tried having everything coming out of one bank account (everyday spending, direct debits etc) and it becomes hard to track. 

I’ve tried splitting my money into pots like travel / food but again it’s hard to know what I need in them. 

Any advice on easy ways to budget / organise your bank accounts? I have several bank accounts. 

You might find it beneficial to use two accounts to reflect fixed/mandatory versus variable/discretionary spending, i.e. have one for largely non-negotiable bills such as energy, utilities, car, food (supermarket shops), etc, and another for the bingo and takeaways.  There's no right or wrong way of approaching this but if you use an account specifically for the more frivolous stuff that you're concerned about then you can simply fund it to a level you're happy with and stop when it's empty....

Olinda99

Forget technology - get a pen and paper and draw some vertical columns. Head the columns 'bingo', 'McDonalds' etc. Every time you spend on eg bingo write it down in the appropriate column. Ditto McDonalds etc

Writing it down will bring it home to you fast!

overspender22

Thanks everyone. Some very useful ideas I hadn’t thought of, even if they are simple my mind was getting caught up in the stress of it!

thanks- will look to keep proper track as I go along using suggestions above!

lr1277

The old fashioned way would be to use cash. Allow yourself a certain amount each week to spend on discretionary stuff. Withdraw that amount in cash and spend over the week. Once the money is gone be disciplined to not spend anymore until you withdraw cash for the next week.
Spending on cards is easy to lose track of how much you have spent.
Spending cash means you see the money leave your hands.
But as has been said, whatever method you choose, discipline is key.

theoretica

One of the points of budgeting is you do sometimes find you don't have as much money as you would like in a category - so you don't do that thing.

I would start with the simplest - which is everything that is fixed or nearly fixed.  Council tax, mortgage, car insurance, home insurance, car servicing, utilities, phone, emergency savings...  You might find it helpful to have all these come out of one bank account.

Then work out what you expect to need as a minimum for other essentials - groceries, commuting...

How much do you have left a month for entertainment and savings?  How do you choose to divide that up?

Rob5342

lr1277 said:

The old fashioned way would be to use cash. Allow yourself a certain amount each week to spend on discretionary stuff. Withdraw that amount in cash and spend over the week. Once the money is gone be disciplined to not spend anymore until you withdraw cash for the next week.
Spending on cards is easy to lose track of how much you have spent.
Spending cash means you see the money leave your hands.
But as has been said, whatever method you choose, discipline is key.

I'd say it was the opposite, cash would be spent with no trace but with a card you can see exactly where it goes. It's also much easier to see how much you have left by looking in the app, and if you have a spare £5 you can transfer it to savngs, with cash it would just get spent.

I find it easiest to have the money split in the bank, that way it takes care of itself. I used to have seperate accounts for bills and spendimg, now I have a Monzo account for everything with pots for bills, and week 2, week 3 and week 4. I know all the money for bills is set aside, so all I need to do is check the balance in the app to see how much is left for that week. I also find it useful to treat savings as a bill and put the money into the savings as soon as I get paid.

MrFrugalFever

Rob5342 said:

lr1277 said:

The old fashioned way would be to use cash. Allow yourself a certain amount each week to spend on discretionary stuff. Withdraw that amount in cash and spend over the week. Once the money is gone be disciplined to not spend anymore until you withdraw cash for the next week.
Spending on cards is easy to lose track of how much you have spent.
Spending cash means you see the money leave your hands.
But as has been said, whatever method you choose, discipline is key.

I'd say it was the opposite, cash would be spent with no trace but with a card you can see exactly where it goes. It's also much easier to see how much you have left by looking in the app, and if you have a spare £5 you can transfer it to savngs, with cash it would just get spent.

I find it easiest to have the money split in the bank, that way it takes care of itself. I used to have seperate accounts for bills and spendimg, now I have a Monzo account for everything with pots for bills, and week 2, week 3 and week 4. I know all the money for bills is set aside, so all I need to do is check the balance in the app to see how much is left for that week. I also find it useful to treat savings as a bill and put the money into the savings as soon as I get paid.

I agree with this ref: cash.

I also have a similar system, but not with Monzo. I have 4 Accounts, 2 with NatWest which is my primary bank and my salary and dividends are paid in to these accounts. One of these is a fixed bills account, once I get paid I then leave enough in the account plus £20 as a buffer in case something suddenly goes up (like a phone contract promo ends etc) then I move the money in to a general spending account.

From there I move money further, to a Pockit prepaid account because it gives me 3% Cashback on fuel & food at Sainsburys. I then allocate myself a set amount for discretionary spending to my Tred Investor account.

What is left in my general spending account with NatWest is then transferred to my Tandem savings account which is linked specifically to the account (they won’t accept transfers in from an account not directly linked and verified first).

I also diversify a bit further than this depending on interest rates and savings goals such as additional instant access savings with NatWest at 3.25%AER and NS&I and Moneybox LISA but that’s sort of taken care of by standing order from bills account as I treat my savings as a mandatory bill at point of payday basically.